Top ! is an audio player-sequencer geared towards sound design and playback for live performances. Be it for theater, dance, comedy, or even a conference, Top enables you to organize the audio elements of your performance into a structured and evolving cue list.

IMPORTANT :Top ! is currently under development, and available as Demo alpha builds. If you are interested and want to download it, I'm infinitely grateful ! But before continuing, please make sure you read the paragraph titled “Alpha versions” and gave a thought to the warning at the end of this page.

Top !

Applications

You're making a sound track for a theater play, and you want it to follow the rythm of the actors' cues rather than the reverse ? Or maybe you're working on a dance piece where improvisation takes a great part, and your sound design needs to be adaptable ? Or you might even need to playback an accompaniment soundtrack with which musicians will play live, and at the same time trigger some sound effects synchronized to visible actions on stage ?

Top ! allows to do this while keeping an organized and structured view of your cue list.

It also enables to create, prepare and rehearse smoothly, without imposing a specific workflow the artistic team. You can easily start in the middle of a sequence while keeping all the elements synchronized, or temporarily pull a sound out of its normal timeline to work on it alone. Top ! doesn't force you (and the rest of the team !) to rehearse a scene from the begining if you want to work on a sequence of just a few cues.

Top ! is particularly fitted for theater plays and dance or music shows that mix live music and pre-recorded soundtracks, and for any event requiring a timed yet adaptable sound design (conferences, webradios, happening...).

Alpha version

Top ! is currently under development. Once completed, it will come in two options :

A basic yet fully usable Demo version for free, including the core cuelist and transport systems, and up to 4 audio outputs and 2 plug-ins per cue.

An Extended version with more outputs and plug-ins per cue, more advanced mix cues (Béziers curves), built-in time-stretching and pitch-shifting, etc...

Later on I intend to add a third version with more advanced features, including a scripting system and an API to customize and extend the capabilities of the software. Video cues and DMX cues for controlling lights are also in my plans, but we're not anywhere close to that for now !

You can read about the current state of Top ! and have a look to my previsions and road map in this post. You can also find a summary of the options and requirements of Top !here.

Top ! is now available as an alpha version. Features will be progressively added as they are implemented, and released at a rate of one alpha build every one or two months. I also intend to publish blog posts containing progress updates.

You can obtain the Demo alpha for free.

WARNING :Top ! is neither complete nor has it been tested. It is relatively early in its development regarding its goals, but it should fulfill very basic needs for playback and mixing. However, expect bugs and lacking features. Preorder only if you're interested in supporting the development or in participating to the testing and bug finding process ! And beware : use this software at your own risks ! Who knows what it could do if fed after midnight ?

Why Top !?

In French, “Top !” means someting like “Go !”, and is used to signal the start of some time-limited or synchronized task. When live broadcasting an opera, for instance, the person who's in charge of reading the score and giving the cues to the mixing engineer often says “Top !” and is referred to as a “Toppeur”.